Diasporic Muslim writers can deploy their accented authenticity to serve neoimperial narratives

Evidence

Now domiciled in the United States, Azar Nafisi and Khaled Hosseini can be read as the kind of “native informer” Hamid Dabashi identifies as crucial to the self-justification of neoimperialism. Dabashi says of such writers: “Faced with the Islamophobic conditions of their new homes, they have learnt the art of simultaneously acknowledging and denying their Muslim origins. They speak English with an accent that confirms their authenticity to their white interlocutors.” Dabashi’s polemic captures the way in which books such as Reading Lolita in Tehran and The Kite Runner peddle images that find a ready audience in the contemporary West. However, I wish to go further and consider how the texts’ formal ambiguities undercut their otherwise selective and simplistic worldviews. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 215

Categorization

• XREF: Dabashi’s native-informer critique is the exact charge leveled at Hamid — the reader can use this to contrast how The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s form refuses the native-informer role. — connects to: Moderate-sounding exiled writers gain media access and reinforce anti-Muslim racism
• SEED: The ‘native informer’ concept frames an essay angle: what formal choices distinguish a diasporic writer who peddles authenticity from one who weaponizes it against the audience.